[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 07 March 2022 - 07:50 PM, said:

I think Batman spends a bit too much time being led by the nose, rather than doing detective work and predicting The Riddler's moves.

Being only Year 2 of his doing this, that point actually makes sense. He's not the seasoned Batman we know yet.

In fact, according to Matt Reeves, there is a cutting room floor scene where Batman

Spoiler

breaks into Arkham and had a 'Silence of the Lambs-type' conversation with Barry Keoghan's version of the proto-Joker (who you saw briefly converse with the Riddler) asking him what he's missing and how to catch the Riddler. So this is very much not a Batman who is perfectly at home solving every aspect of the crimes yet, especially if he needs to go to another criminal he already somehow put into Arkham for help.

Aptorian, on 07 March 2022 - 07:50 PM, said:

Hope they make more. Hope they pick another unexplored Batman villain.

It should not have escaped your notice that other than the Joker cameo moment, the word HUSH was scrawled across the screen at one point when they were discussing Thomas Wayne's Renewal stuff. Methinks Reeves was intentionally leaning into that....because fuck me, a live action BATMAN: HUSH? YES PLEASE.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 07 March 2022 - 08:05 PM

[Primateus]

It seems, unfortunately, that William Hurt has passed away.

https://www.bbc.com/...t-arts-60731686

[Malankazooie]

If you haven't watched the movie Altered States starring him, you should do so immediately.

[Aptorian]

Trailer for the new Ms. Marvel Disney+ series.



Looks cool enough. I was wondering how they would do the whole "body morphing" thing on screen. I can see why they go for purple glow powers instead of flesh expanding in a slightly body horror kind of way.

EDIT: Oops this was supposed to go in the marvel thread. Oh well.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 15 March 2022 - 02:57 PM

[QuickTidal]

Started watching Best Picture contender DRIVE MY CAR because as a Haruki Murakami fan I felt it my duty to check it out. It's like 3 hours long, and the opening credits don't roll till 40 minutes in! LOL

I like it so far. It's very much what you'd expect from a movie based on Murakami's work, and so far I'm enjoying it. It's very much hitting the stride of how Murakami doesn't care much about individual character depth, and more about the bigger picture and messages.

I have yet to see a Cat though....can it be a Murakami story without a cat?

[QuickTidal]

Finished DRIVE MY CAR.

It was very good. It's too long. The way that Murakami wrote the short story that it was based on was the perfect length for this story...

But I WILL say the director and actors NAILED filming and acting a Murakami story like this.

Spoiler

Like they hammer home a lot of the broad scoping ideas that Murakami's work entails, like Kafuku having a LITERAL glaucoma (blind spot) that prevents him from driving in the future, and that relates to his own wife....a woman who loved but he didn't really understand, and was so terrified of losing that he didn't confront her infidelity for fear of that....only to lose her to an "act of god" that he could not expect (cerebral hemorrhage in the movie, unfound cancer in the short story IIRC)....and his post-widowed survival subsists around that fact and there is so little he can do to solve it.

And to have him interact with someone who is clearly in the same blank slate emotionless from their own "survival mode" life in Watari is a great way to bring them both to a realization about it, and allow them to move on.

So the cathartic moment at the end where he embraces her and cries feels like a pressure valve release.

It's an EXCELLENT film, and very deserving of the Best Pic nomination....it's just too long overall and repeats a few motifs and scenes to really hammer home the points...but yeah, I really liked it and it will sit with me a long time.

This is very much why I like Murakami's work. It sits with me and haunts me long after I'm done it.

[Mezla PigDog]

Pulled a muscle in my neck. Can't sleep. Reading someone live tweet the Oscars. I assumed it would bore me to sleep. I WAS WRONG!!!

[worry]

Lol if only his last few records slapped that hard.


I went on a little movie spree this week:
Encanto -- quite good, a little too quick in its resolution, but one of the best sets of Disney songs in a long while.
The Tomorrow War -- it's like 3 episodes of a TV show (almost literally, in terms of length, and in terms of how the acts break down). The first one is dumb and fun. The middle one is dumb and boring. The last one is just dumb. The aliens are pretty well designed though. Sam Richardson is quite good in it.

Jackass Forever -- very good, and to my recollection the most painful movie in the series. The new cast commit themselves well, but that and the missing faces (and to some degree the aging) do make this a little more somber, but it's still really daring and no-punches-pulled. Very funny, very gnarly, and probably the highest wiener/balls count in the entire series.

Scream 5 -- not great (especially the finale) but overall better than 3 and 4 imo.

Werewolves Within -- I guess this is based on a video game, which I didn't know going in, but it's a horror comedy. It has a lot of funny people in it (Sam Richardson, again; Milana Vayntrub; Harvey Guillen) and some of the jokes do land, but as an overall movie it's just middling. Ah well!

[Malankazooie]

The O.G. Andy Kaufman did it better. Funny joke about G.I. Jane 2 though.

https://twitter.com/...270716063469576

[Nicodimas]

Smith is unhinged for sure..

I'm taking it as his wife is a open marriage is too much and not okay with all that has come out..especially with kids friends part. Situation was reverse would be a different story.

Crazy speech too boot. Long applause and everything.weird world



Wild <rocks like half his size too geez >

[Malankazooie]

I feel ashamed of the world and the masses believing this was real, but it was fake people. I'm not sure how you could ever believe it was legit. Do you really think Chris Rock would continue on and say "Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me"? If that wasn't enough to convince you, Will Smith was on camera laughing at his seat not long after the bit.

But if you you need convincing: https://twitter.com/...289589605285889

And, again, Andy Kaufman did it way better. So much better in fact that it was only recently revealed in a documentary that it was indeed a fake and that Letterman was in on it and kept it a secret for 40 years.



The thing that is worrisome though, is that pretty much the whole planet is convinced the Will Smith slap was real. It's worrisome and speaks to the prevalence of conspiracy theories dominating peoples' lives - horse paste for covid, Hillary eating babies, jewish space lasers, flat earth... on and on. Not chemtrails though, thems real. But yeah, we are in a lot of trouble.

[Gorefest]

Malankazooie, on 28 March 2022 - 05:49 PM, said:

I feel ashamed of the world and the masses believing this was real, but it was fake people. I'm not sure how you could ever believe it was legit. Do you really think Chris Rock would continue on and say "Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me"? If that wasn't enough to convince you, Will Smith was on camera laughing at his seat not long after the bit.

But if you you need convincing: https://twitter.com/...289589605285889

And, again, Andy Kaufman did it way better. So much better in fact that it was only recently revealed in a documentary that it was indeed a fake and that Letterman was in on it and kept it a secret for 40 years.



The thing that is worrisome though, is that pretty much the whole planet is convinced the Will Smith slap was real. It's worrisome and speaks to the prevalence of conspiracy theories dominating peoples' lives - horse paste for covid, Hillary eating babies, jewish space lasers, flat earth... on and on. Not chemtrails though, thems real. But yeah, we are in a lot of trouble.

Sure, Will Smith is going to risk his reputation and career on an Oscar joke. Of course it was real. I think you may have slid down a conspiracy slide there.

Then again, in the bigger scheme of things: does anyone really care?

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 28 March 2022 - 06:14 PM

[amphibian]

Rock and Smith have been friends for almost 30 years. Jada was in open relationships pretty much her entire life. I did a dive into Will and Jada a few years ago when he did the scientology movie with his son because I wanted to know how the same people who got my poor and very white uncle and most of his family got the mega rich and very black Smiths in deep.

Jada was a super successful drug dealer who went to artistic high school with Tupac (put up 100k bail in money, not in form of a house as collateral for him in 1995 before she made it big as an actor). She dated around and kinda openly had many partners at a time, which is basically her right to do so. Smith liked that deal and joined in with the agreement that they keep their side relationships private from the public.

The slap is 100% fake, but makes for good TV.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 28 March 2022 - 11:20 PM

[Mezla PigDog]

I can believe both the real and the fake theories. There is something weird about Will Smith's facial expression afterwards. Equally it plays out so awkwardly, a fake would have been staged better. The fake theory mainly falls down over what's in it for Will Smith? Surely it tarnished the culminating moment of his serious acting career to date.

[worry]

Seemed reasonable to me (in terms of order of events). WS hears the joke and does a polite laugh for the camera, then it dawns on him that it's an alopecia joke and not a run of the mill razzing, then he gets up and gives CR a warning slap. It's not a "let's throw down" slap, it's a "watch what you say" slap. I imagine CR got the message. Anyway, aside from the extraordinary setting, it's their private business and I'm sure will be settled (or not) privately with maybe a few press releases since they're all public figures. Hopefully it will escape the discourse machine sooner rather than later (I don't mean the board or other civilians, I mean the actual vultures who get paid by the take).

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 29 March 2022 - 04:07 AM, said:

Seemed reasonable to me (in terms of order of events). WS hears the joke and does a polite laugh for the camera, then it dawns on him that it's an alopecia joke and not a run of the mill razzing, then he gets up and gives CR a warning slap. It's not a "let's throw down" slap, it's a "watch what you say" slap.

I think the problem with this is that it crossed a line that's never really been crossed. Smith didn't just slap Rock. He was a rich and famous actor who got up in front of a room full of his peers, and on live TV in front of millions and slapped a comedian for telling a joke.

This means he slapped Don Rickles. He slapped Dave Chapelle. He slapped Ricky Gervais. He slapped Richard Pryor. And really every other risky comedian. This normalized attacking a person doing their job because you didn't like the words they said while doing that job.

Yes, in normal circumstances this would not be as big a deal a it is. But this isn't normal circumstances.

Just like every other instance of people getting away with this kind of thing, this will embolden some people that this is okay to do now.

And I'd also love to know where the proverbial "line" is? Because that line moves for every individual person.

So either we hold all comedians accountable and no jokes that might offend a certain person are okay, or we accept that many jokes won't be to our personal taste. And you know what? If that's the way the pendulum wants to swing, fine, but let's keep that energy for everyone that tells jokes we don't like then.

worry, on 29 March 2022 - 04:07 AM, said:

Anyway, aside from the extraordinary setting, it's their private business and I'm sure will be settled (or not) privately with maybe a few press releases since they're all public figures.

Nah. This closing of ranks around this is not going to fly. These two men made this not only a public event, but as public as you can probably get. This is not and never was a private matter at that point.

If this was a private matter...it would have happened behind closed doors and we would have maybe heard about it later. Like Brad Pitt supposedly holding Weinstein accountable for his behaviour with Gwyneth Paltrow behind closed doors in the late 90's. THAT was a private matter, that we heard about later. If Pitt walked up in the Oscar stage and slapped Weinstein...we would not only be talking about it, it would be long remembered and discussed. This is no different.

If they air it in a public space, people get to weigh in. Not sorry. They made it everyones business by sucking the energy out of the night for a personal tiff.

I feel bad for people like Questlove, and the cast and producers of CODA whose big night is obliterated by this utter high school nonsense.

worry, on 29 March 2022 - 04:07 AM, said:

Hopefully it will escape the discourse machine sooner rather than later (I don't mean the board or other civilians, I mean the actual vultures who get paid by the take).

Oh I think it will. People are already sick of talking about it.

And no they won't take Will's Oscar...lots of people who have done WAY way shittier things have and kept Oscars.

As an aside: Watching people trip over themselves to try differentiate between a bald-head/Alopecia joke and the literal DECADES of male hair loss/bald jokes is amusing to me as if they are wildly different things instead of both being "making fun of genetic traits that can't be helped". Like Smith himself spent 4 damned seasons making bald and fat jokes at the expense of Uncle Phil (James Avery) with jokes not written by him (just like Rock reading jokes not written by him at the Oscars)...but that's apparently okay, while this is not?

[worry]

Don't have time right now for a close reading of that (but will later) but at a quick glance I agree this should happen to Ricky Gervais too.

[Macros]

Eh,

I've thought a bit more about this (as the memes continue to fly into my phone)

Did Will over react? IMO yep, buuuuutttt...
I think the fact that Chris isn't pressing charges takes the issue away about Hollywood "closing ranks" over it.

I've been out in the pub plenty of times where someone has crossed the line, got a slap and that was that, pressing charges or suing over something like that is a waste of court time, it's been sorted there and then.
When a hit came out of nowhere, or there was a proper punch that caused damage was thrown then action was taken.

I know we don't live in an Adam Sandler movie, but (imo) entirely too many comedians make a living off the back of being horrible bastards and some of them could do with a solid slap on occasion (hear me out)
I'm not saying Chris Rock is one of them, the joke in question was fairly mild compared to some other people's stuff.
If it was a comedy Central Roast and Will reacted like that, dick move as that's a forum where everyone is fair game by being there.

I think the massive reaction is also a part of how culture is today, people get off on reacting and judging.

But the fact that Chris is taking no issue/action on the event to me means they've dealt and move on.

[Macros]

Maybe we're crossing into discussion forum territory?

[Gorefest]

Still not okay to slap someone. I would have been all thumbs up if Will Smith would have got up the stage, grabbed the mic from Chris Rock and simply said: "Not cool, man, my wife has a genetic disease that can cause hair loss and that has caused her considerable stress and anxiety over the years. There is a big difference between freedom of speech and the need to offend over a cheap giggle at someone's expense. People who fail to understand the difference are morally bankrupt." Mic drop and back to his chair. But slapping someone like that? Very poor form.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 29 March 2022 - 05:45 PM